United States to dispatch F-22 stealth fighters to S. Korea

Four US F-22 stealth fighters flew across South Korea Wednesday to an air base near Seoul where they are being deployed in a show of force following Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests.

Four F-22 fighters, one of US strategic assets that have been estimated to be sent to show joint defense readiness between Seoul and Washington, will make a sortie on Wednesday to the Korean peninsula.

The airplanes coming from the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, landed at the Osan base after the flyover, which was joined by four F-15K Slam Eagle fighters from the South Korean Air Force and four other F-16 Fighting Falcons by USFK.

The dispatch is part of a buildup of weaponry in response to North Korea’s recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

The United States often sends powerful warplanes to South Korea in times of tension with North Korea.

Just days ago, Seoul ordered the closure of the jointly run Kaesong industrial park, a manufacturing complex just inside North Korea, later saying Pyongyang had funneled most of the money from the park into its weapons programs.

Beijing has reacted angrily to the prospect of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system being deployed in South Korea, but a tougher line from Washington and Seoul seems to be having some effect on Beijing’s calculations, experts said.

A month later, the North conducted a long-range rocket launch, which the outside world denounced as a defiant ballistic missile test.

The joint military drills scheduled to start in March, which in most years last eight weeks and involve hundreds of thousands of South Korean and USA troops, will be the largest ever, according to South Korean officials.

“It is a shift from an ideal North Korea policy to a realistic North Korea policy”, he said.

South Korea’s president on Tuesday warned North Korea faces collapse if it doesn’t abandon its nuclear bomb program, an unusually strong broadside that is certain to infuriate Pyongyang.

“Sanctions on North Korea have been around for years “” imposed both by individual countries and the United Nations “” but Pyongyang’s weapons programs have grown only more sophisticated. Pyongyang retaliated by expelling all the South Koreans there, put its military in charge of the area and cut off key communication hotlines between the Koreas. Opponents say the system could help USA radar spot missiles in other countries. The signs read ” Oppose the arrival of F-22 stealth fighters and the possible deployment of the United States’ advanced defense system THAAD”. Pyongyang has long accused Washington and Seoul of agitating for its collapse.

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